This is NOT your father's Presidential campaign. Not even close. If the internet has anything to say about it, the days of bumper sticker mentality and less than factual (OK,mud-slinging) political TV commercials may be over. And it’s not just the fact
that presidential hopefuls are spending more advertising dollars online. Yes,
McCain and Obama might be neck and neck in the fight for Search supremacy, with
McCain reportedly pulling ahead in paid Search by driving 22% of traffic from
this source, compared to Obama’s 14%, even though Obama’s spending $5.5 Million
on the effort. (How’d you like to be optimizing THOSE search campaigns?)
The real story lies in the power of the sheer number of people engaged in the online political story, coupled with the voluminous and instantaneous mass of information being disseminated via blogs, videos and online news. According to a Business Week article, which cites a Pew Research Center study, 27% of Americans go online at least once a week to do something related to the campaign. This represents approximately half of the number of people who turned out to vote in 2004. Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum, a nonpartisan group that tracks political influence and technology, said, "This is the unseen force that didn’t exist. My 81-year-old dad e-mailing Barack Obama's speeches or Jon Stewart's videos to his 50 friends—he's part of this force that's turning citizens into pamphleteers, whether they know it or not."
The Pew study found that 40% of Americans have gone online to get political news, up from 16% in 2000. 35% of Americans have watched political videos, compared with 13% in 2004. And the real differentiator is that they’re actively doing their own fact-checking – searching out the direct sources of information, rather than simply swallowing pundits' take on events. About 39% have gone online to watch debates and speeches, and read position papers.
So while CNN estimates that $3 billion will be spent on political TV ads in the 2008 election (almost double the amount spent in 2004), I'd say
the odds favor a growing number of informed, intelligent voters.
Perhaps even a majority of the public coming out to vote? Sounds like
democracy to me. Thanks Internet.
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